The timing seems less than coincidental, announcing a cut in transportation funding days after announcing a pilot program to study road users’ fees–but the message is just as stark. The State of California is running out of money to fund transportation.

Democrats in the Assembly are trying to keep the focus on the poor repair of the state’s roads rather than the need to raise more funds to fix them. Image: ##http://asmdc.org/fixtheroads/##California State Assembly Democrats##

Last week, the California Transportation Commission (CTC) slashed its own estimates of what the gas tax would bring in by $754 million over the next five years. The Commission’s action impacts what the state budget will look like for transportation and heralds dire news for counties and municipalities that were counting on state dollars to fund infrastructure needs.

“What this means is that almost every county in California that relies on this source of funding for projects that improve traffic and air quality will have to cut or delay projects indefinitely,” stated CTC Chair Lucy Dunn.

“The commission adopted the most optimistic scenario we could make in good conscience, in the hope agreement will be reached on a number of reforms and new funding increases currently under consideration by the Legislature. But failing that, I fear we will be faced with even more draconian cuts next year.”

While the state is exploring the option of switching away from the gas tax, that change won’t be happening for years. In the meantime, raising the tax seems the most likely way to solve the problem in the short-term.

Assembly Transportation Committee Chair Jim Frazier is recommending a series of revenue enhancements including a ten-and-a-half-cent-per-gallon increase to the gas tax (from its current level of twelve cents per gallon). Frazier has been outspoken on the issue of repairing California’s roads and is one of the legislative leaders of the “Keep California Moving” coalition of business, labor, and government groups.

However, movement from the legislature has been slow, despite a special session that was called last year specifically to look at the funding crisis. No idea to increase revenue gained traction, and the issue was tabled even as the backlog of transportation projects on hold grew. With last week’s action by the CTC, three quarters of a billion dollars in promised funds to county and local governments will likely need to be with held.

But if you’re expecting a bipartisan solution to the cash shortfall, don’t hold your breath. The Sacramento Bee talked to a Republican leader who seemed unaware that the state’s transportation funding crisis was an ongoing, long-term issue.

Following Brown’s State of the State address on Thursday, Senate Republican leader Jean Fuller of Bakersfield said that given the increasing amount of revenue California is taking in, “it seems a little premature to fix the newest problems with new taxes.”

As the value captured from the state’s gas tax continues to fall, and the conditions of the California’s roads and bridges continues to worsen, state leaders unveiled a plan last week to pilot a program that could lead to replacing the gas tax with a road user fee based on vehicle miles traveled. A summary of the report can be found here.

“The gas tax is based on people getting gasoline at a filling station. People are moving to hybrid and electric vehicles. People are not using gasoline at the same pace. It used to be that when you got gas at a gas station, you would be paying, through the gas tax, for road maintenance,” explains Santa Monica City Councilmember Pam O’Connor, who sat on a Technical Advisory Committee for the pilot program.

“That funding source has declined. Another source needed to be identified to assure funding to fix, maintain, and build new roads,” she said.

Caltrans maintains 50,000 lane-miles of highway and nearly 13,000 state-owned bridges. However, the state’s current fuel excise tax is sufficient to fund only $2.3 billion of work, leaving$5.7 billion in unfunded repairs each year.

“The gas tax is outdated and no longer capable of meeting all of our future transportation revenue needs,” said Will Kempton, executive director of the California Transportation Commission, the appointed body that released a report detailing the pilot program.

“The pilot is an excellent opportunity to study road charging and should provide the Legislature the data it needs to better determine whether and how this idea might work in California,” he said.

Caltrans is looking for all sorts of motorized vehicle owners to take part in the project. To accurately gauge what the public’s reaction to changing from a gas tax to a vehicle-miles-traveled fee is a big deal and they want to present lawmakers with a wide range of volunteers’ opinions. Are you a sales person that drives hundreds of miles a week? A transit commuter who uses the car for weekend getaways? Something in between? You qualify to participate in the pilot program.

So how will miles be tracked? Well, that’s another thing they are studying. A fact sheet prepared for interested participants summarized the options as “no-tech, low-tech, or go-tech.” Basically, participants in this project would have the option of using smart phone apps, GPS devices attached to their cars or, for the privacy-minded, a notepad and paper.

“The committee looked at options including a GPS-based modeled,” explains O’Connor. “If some people have more concerns about privacy, you could do it by an odometer reading.”

Also still up for study is how the agency will charge people for using the roads. Will California residents be charged for all the driving they do? Driving just on highways? Driving outside the state? Will there be a one-time fee offered for people to pay up-front? All of that is still to be determined.

But for O’Connor, these questions can’t be answered quickly enough.

“We all want good roads. Well, if we want good roads, we have to figure out how to fund their maintenance. We have a problem in California. We have some deferred road maintenance and the longer we defer the more expensive it gets,” she said.

Damien is the executive director of the Southern California Streets Initiative which publishes Longbeachize, Streetsblog Los Angeles, and Santa Monica Next. Damien wins journalism awards, which is cool and surprising because he writes at a third grade level.